Week 761

What’s this? I’m blogging about my work on a weekly basis – a simple way to track and archive whatever it is I spend my time on.

Last week was the second and last week of my vacation. Doing nothing went pretty well!

Still, I couldn’t ignore all the goings-on around De verdwijners. My publisher had silently sent my novel off to stores ahead of its official release, and I started seeing reports of the book being bought by and delivered to people. Back in Utrecht on Sunday, I even spotted it in an honest-to-God atom-based bookshop.

Judith at Boekblogger (I found out that ‘Boekblogger’ and ‘Leeswammes’ are one and the same, which I was confused about in my previous weeknotes) was the first to publish a formal review. She likes the book, though she would’ve preferred it to go on longer, in a thriller-like manner I think. (So interesting. I didn’t consider this at all when I was writing and rewriting.)

I also got a phone call from my mom, who said she was “really impressed”, and thought the book was “well-written, until the very last word”. Everyone knows a writer should worry if his mother doesn’t like his book, so I consider this a potential obstruction successfully bypassed.

Both Judith at Boekblogger and my mom said they can easily see De verdwijners as a movie. Speaking of which: Bram Ruiter shot two scenes for the book trailer last week, which I got a sneak peek of in the form of the photograph below. I feel a bit silly getting totally excited by this. Hopefully the trailer will be done in time for the book presentation next week.

On my end, I updated the front page of this website (with a more prominent spot for my novels, as well as a collection of highlighted articles that I’ve wanted to add for a while). I also updated the page for De verdwijners (with links to Bol.com and a surprisingly long list of credits, featuring everyone who helped make the book a reality).

In the games journalism department, my short review of Rymdkapsel was published in nrc.next. And I put my Halo interview online. Otherwise, I played a lot of Plants vs. Zombies 2, which I’ll write about soon.

Finally, I bit the bullet and bought Infinite Jest. But I didn’t start reading yet.